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One Thing Gone: 30(ish)-day Personal Challenge

A few days ago, I read about the new ebook Clutterfree by Zen Habits author Leo Babauta. I haven’t read the actual ebook yet, but it got me thinking about ways that I can declutter my own house and life.

Since we’re coming up on a traditional season of gift-giving, I was thinking that a good prologue to that season would be to get rid of things that I no longer need or want. It’s a thought that I’ve had in passing here and there, to some minimal effect. But for the next month (plus a coulpe days) I am making a concerted effort to get rid of one item each day with the purpose of making my life simpler — or at least less cluttered.

Each day, I will describe the item(s) I am getting rid of, it’s (or their) previous personal significance to me, and the reason why I am getting rid of it. I will also include pictures of the items, as I remember to….

A few rules I am establishing for myself:

“Getting rid” of something means removing it from my home. Some items I will sell, some I will give away, and a few I might even throw out if I don’t think they are of use to anyone else

Although some things will get thrown out, my intent here is not simply to count things that would normally be considered garbage. They are things that I have been holding on to because I considered (and perhaps still consider) them to have some personal utility — but which I have not actually used in a long time and likely will not miss.

One Thing Gone #1

The first item I am getting rid of is actually a lot of three similar items. They are earbuds that I have obtained at various times over the last few years. All of them were fairly cheap (one of them came with my ipod), but each of them does not work very well in one of the ears. I keep them as “backups” but considering that I have two fully functioning pairs of earbuds that I use frequently, I have not actually used any of these in quite awhile.

I doubt anyone would want to stick these in their own ears, so I am simply throwing them away. The picture above was snapped before their final voyage into the west.